I've already started sticking them to the walls of my house to control lights, the thermostat, the garage door etc. This didn't make sense at $400/device but as soon as they hit $100 or so the game was afoot. Now they're so cheap, its literally cheaper to grab one from "the pile" and whip up a nice html5 interface for the task than to buy a dedicated Insteon controller or Nest thermostat. Hell, it was cheaper to automate my garage door and give it a REST interface on the web than to buy a single new clicker at Sears.
I'm guessing that in the near future there won't be many surfaces left in our lives that aren't festooned with touch-screenage.
This is one of the reason's I've spent so much time on Blossom[1], which brings iOS-style development to HTML 5 (Quartz drawing, Core Animation-style transitions, etc.).
Eventually, these devices will be everywhere, and all of them will need quick-to-build-and-deploy interfaces, that perform well and are consumer-friendly.
Blossom runs great on my iPad and Nexus 7 -- smooth, fluid -- and development and debugging is easy with Chrome.
Anyway, I think you hit the nail on the head on how these low-cost devices will be used in the very near future.
Which is to say: what's truly dead is the single-purpose electronic device.
Modulo reliability and/or battery life / power consumption. Power draw on single-purpose devices can be very, very, very low. It's going to be a while before you can power a tablet with a postage-stamp sized PV cell or thermocouple. But 1-800-YOU-WILL.
I'm curious how much time / hardware hacking was necessary to implement your own thermostat or garage door controller. The garage door controller seems like the simpler of the two to reverse engineer, but a thermostat has a number of inputs to reverse engineer unless there is a documented/standard api of sorts.
Also, where are you sourcing cheap touch screens 'from the pile?'
Ah. I mis-understood you on the touch screen part. You made a web interface that you access via cheap tablets. I was thinking that you were replacing physical switches with wall-mounted mini touchscreens.
Yes. That's really where the magic comes from. We've had model controller and view smashed together poorly in single purpose devices for so long, it takes a bit of a mental reorientation to understand that a light switch even has a M, a V, and a C.
Once you do though, you get the awesomeness of programming together your lights, security system, and garage door opener into one view with a software "controller" that can open the door, report its state and turn on the lights with a button press. Then you can put that button on any wall, phone or whatever. If you want to create the functionality of merely replacing a switch with a little touch screen, you can, but that's just one instantiation of the many that become possible.
What hardware are you using? I've wanted to try home automation for a while but all I can find is either the lowend stuff (X10) or the really highend stuff that requires a dealer to install it for you.
I don't think original parent did away with the hardware components.
X10, Insteon etc also sell software to manage their devices. That is not cheap. That s/w is probably what he replaced.
I did a small bit of home automation myself. I went with X10 (for low cost). I strongly suggest you do that too.
I set up an intrusion alarm system. I have multiple wireless (RF) door open and motion-detection sensors. I use a RF-to-USB X10 device to receive these signals on my Linux desktop.
My shell/Tcl scripts interpret this data and send email and (SMS via AT&T's email-to-sms gateway) if the alarm is triggered. They also turn on many lights and play an audio warning message, and turn on a webcam and start streaming the video to a remote server. :)
Since my house wiring is ancient, Insteon won't work in my house. For the same reason, ground-level sockets can be controlled by a plugged-in X10 controller, but not wall switches.
I have an eclectic blend of old X10 and Insteon devices. I've got an antique serial interface for querying and setting the statuses of the modules. The shipped software was win3.1. The hardware control devices were awful. Hooking the serial device to my home server and writing a restful web app with control screens for various tasks for use with my smartphone and junk tablets scattered about was magic.
I also replaced a thermostat and the ridiculous "mainboard" in our home security system with beaglebone boards.
I've been working on that stuff for years. The missing part was always a cheap, always on touch screen device to give it a reasonable interface. The day is finally here. I'm really excited about the kindle paperwhite for this purpose.
Something that isn't often considered for home use is DMX-512. I use DMX to control lights with the Nitrogen Logic automation controller. It has the lowest per-channel dimming cost of any system I've found (cheaper per light even than X10 and Insteon dimmers), but requires home run wiring.
Using my libdmx485[0], you can control a DMX network very easily using a highly affordable FTDI USB-to-RS-485 adapter, or (shameless plug time) you can buy a Nitrogen Logic controller if you don't want to write your own software.
I've been wanting to get into home automation too. My biggest fear is vendor lock-in. I'd like to hear more about how he gave his garage door a REST API, because that's something I could build my own interface for.
Looks like its been discontinued but I'm sure something like it still exists. I probably payed the $20 retail for it. Thus my judgement that it cost less than a new clicker from Sears.
The garage door has a sensor that's part of the security system, which was replaced by a beaglebone. Between the two systems, I can use the main server to program a small app to GET the state of the door and PUT the door into the open and closed state.
Of course, the next step is that the massive proliferation of panel displays all over everything will make them tacky and gauche. Look for first class seats and high end luxury cars and nice hotel rooms to begin deleting screens, since their absence will now be luxurious...
I'm guessing that in the near future there won't be many surfaces left in our lives that aren't festooned with touch-screenage.